


Violation of Staff

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meredith, stay out of Orsino's office. ...Or, don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Violation of Staff

He doesn’t always travel with the staff. Sometimes he leaves it in his office, propped up between two bookshelves, gleaming ebony wood framed between rich mahogany. Like most mages worth their salt, he’s learnt to manipulate with his hands alone, those agile fingers curving gently around quivering balls of energy that spark and flare at his touch before shooting outward to do his bidding. It is one way he is like the Qunari’s _saarebas_ — one way, yes, not the only way.

He leaves the staff when its weight is too much on a back already bowed, when he can no more suffer the ominous arch of the serpents over his head, when the significance the staff carries is more than he is willing to wield.

Meredith is drawn to it. It thrums with energy, as if some vital bit of him is permanently imbued in the wood itself. The wood is sleek and well-sanded, so smooth it feels like slick metal. It is unnerving in its design, and even as it repulses the knight-commander, so it also draws her in.  
Like magic itself, she supposes. Like the first enchanter himself.

She slips into his office when he has gone and steps around the wide, cluttered desk, her fingers reaching the staff before the rest of her does. She takes it into her hands, sliding her palm over the length of it, following the curve of one dragon’s head with a fingertip. She doesn’t mean to linger — it is just a moment stolen, just to sate her curiosity, just to know how it feels in her hands.

But there is _so much_ of him in it — she thinks she can feel the impressions of his hands around it, feel the flow of lyrium deep within the wood’s veins that pulses when he takes hold of it, smell the scent of him that seeps in when it is strapped so close to his body. Her pulse quickens as she strokes the ebony wood, and when she breathes in she thinks she can feel his fingers stroking her in sync.

She might have pressed it close against the length of her body, let it up under the folds of her skirts to slide against the inside of her thigh, might have rubbed it against her neck to mingle her scent with his. She might have.

And likewise, Orsino might have returned to his office to find nothing amiss, but to feel something vital and deep-in-him throb when he takes his staff in hand, just as if he’d taken something else in hand, and he might think the wood more fragrant than usual, and he might glance reflexively — speculatively — in the direction of Meredith’s office…  
Well, he just might.


End file.
